Fundraising providers on challenges to setting up mobile giving

“Nothing is more frustrating than getting to the end of a payment process only to have it fail. This experience could cause a donor to give up and schools to lose valuable dollars. Advancement offices need a secure and reliable platform that allows them to raise funds anywhere, anytime, via any channel.”

“Mobile-optimization remains a challenge for institutions, making it difficult for donors to even reach a donation form. With donors being 34 percent more likely to make a gift after reaching a donation form when the website is responsive, a mobile-centric strategy is imperative for institutions to grow their online giving programs.”

—Tim Hill, president, Blackbaud Higher Education Solutions

“There can be hesitation from finance and procurement around adding a new payment processor. Additionally, the tradition has been to use giving forms to collect as much information on a constituent as possible. Some mobile donation options go against that logic at the expense of convenience.”

—Courtney Camps, director of customer success, EverTrue

“An institution’s biggest challenge is to make sure their donation form is responsive in design so that it works on any size and type of device. This often lies in the hands of the mobile donation service provider. A second challenge is to make mobile donating a one-click step that yields better results.”

“Most schools lack data on the cost of not offering an online giving solution that is fully optimized for mobile devices: the donors and dollars that are slipping through the cracks. This cost is extraordinarily high. People today live on their mobile devices. If it’s not as easy to make a charitable gift from their mobile device as it is for them to buy something on Amazon, most of them simply won’t.”

—Kestrel A. Linder, co-founder and CEO, GiveCampus

“The biggest roadblocks for institutions adding or enhancing mobile donation options are the universities’ misperceptions about text messaging and asking for money without achieving engagement beforehand. Some schools have policies in place about whom they may text in a fundraising capacity, even though the TCPA [Telephone Consumer Protection Act] gives them permission to text anyone in their database. Once they get over that hurdle, then they launch a campaign with a ‘donate now’ call to action, without properly nurturing their donors.”